From a legal standpoint I'm with the company -- if I pay someone to invent it's not unreasonable that I own what they invent. From an economics standpoint I th

From a legal standpoint I'm with the company -- if I pay someone to invent it's not unreasonable that I own what they invent. From an economics standpoint I think companies benefit from attracting innovative people. If you are hiring inventors, you want people who do it habitually and the best of those will feel uncomfortable signing away their free time. From this standpoint a company should worry about a new hire who doesn't object to a 24-hour IP assignment clause. I haven't seen hard numbers on this but I imagine that patent applications went from more individuals in ~1900 (wright brothers era) to more corporations circa 1950 (IBM transistor era). I'm sure there are many reasons for this (larger companies in the 50s, postwar employment trends, less low hanging fruit in basic research). But it would be great to see that trend reverse.